Massive Bio and Amber Specialty Pharmacy Announce Nationwide Partnership to Revolutionize Digitally Enabled Oncology Clinical Trial Recruitment through AI Technology Platform

• May 03, 2022
• Amber Specialty Pharmacy
• Oncology, Press Releases, Technology

NEW YORK–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Massive Bio, Inc., a leader in precision medicine and artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled patient-centric clinical trial enrollment for oncology, and Amber Specialty Pharmacy, a pioneer and leader in the specialty pharmacy industry with true best-in-class programs and locations strategically placed across the United States, announced its partnership to provide advanced data-driven technology solutions for patient recruitment services to the oncology research ecosystem, and thereby offer better access for cancer patients to leading-edge clinical trials. Through this partnership, Amber Specialty Pharmacy will seamlessly connect patients in need for clinical trials with Massive Bio’s matching and concierge enrollment services and support cancer patients and providers throughout the country; the combined capabilities include Amber Specialty Pharmacy’s 26 million payer lives, over 50 US Limited Distribution Networks and Massive Bio’s 60,000 unique cancer patients, 12 countries global presence – making this the first and largest partnership of its kind.

“Amber Specialty Pharmacy is dedicated to meeting the clinical, emotional, and financial needs of cancer patients and their caregivers. Our Oncology Center of Excellence (COE) was designed to provide cancer patients with an enhanced level of care during their treatment journey,” said Kristin Williams, president of Amber Specialty Pharmacy. “When faced with a cancer diagnosis, time is of the essence. It is critical that advanced cancer patients have real-time access resources readily available to them, including clinical trial options and a pathway to enrollment across lines of therapy. Massive Bio’s AI technology platform and expertise in cancer clinical trials are fully aligned with these goals, resulting in improved health outcomes and reduced costs for the industry,” Williams added.

Amber Specialty Pharmacy’s patient-centered model of care and oncology COE team provides patients and their caregivers individualized care with ongoing education and support to ensure patients have what they need to feel supported throughout their treatment journey. They also utilize a proprietary artificial intelligence (AI) model to identify patients at risk for lower adherence early in treatment, which allows real time interventions, offering guidance and support to patients, leading to positive treatment outcomes. The model is also built to remove barriers to coverage and building bridges toward seamless collaboration between providers and pharmacy.

“Amber Specialty Pharmacy’s best-in-class service model has earned the trust of the nation’s largest stakeholders in healthcare, as well as many pharmaceutical commercial partners in the oncology space,” said Selin Kurnaz, Massive Bio’s CEO and Co-Founder. “Massive Bio’s patient centered and AI-augmented approach to trial recruitment levering our command center and SYNERGY-AI engine, combined with Amber Specialty Pharmacy’s advanced analytics and capabilities using a technology platform with real-time patient insights, enables all the oncology research stakeholders to optimize patient enrollment and activation at an exponential scale nationwide. We are the only company to use an AI-integrated app and mobile technology to find your eligibility for clinical trials, as well as the best sites closest to you, and it is a natural extension to integrate and partner with Amber Specialty Pharmacy’s outstanding Oncology COE model and platform.”

Massive Bio had recently announced the launch of its NASA-style Oncology Clinical Trial Command Center (OCTCC) to disrupt and accelerate trial enrollment, and also the launch of its 100K Cancer Clinical Trial Singularity Program aimed at matching 100,000 cancer patients in real-time to cutting-edge clinical trials using its Massive Bio’s AI-based technology, website and apps across iOS and Android platforms, expanding their presence as a global company with country-level success in 12 markets.

“With over 13,000 active cancer clinical trials active in the US at any given time, the oncology trial ecosystem and its providers look to industry leaders and digital health solutions for better ways to activate real-time data insights and succeed in this complex research environment, which is ever-focused in oral oncolytic and individualized precision medicine approaches,” mentioned Arturo Loaiza-Bonilla, M.D., Co-Founder of Massive Bio. “We are excited to leverage our personalized concierge patient-centric models and Amber Specialty Pharmacy’s data-driven approach to generate patient insights in real time, which will augment and optimize our already successful AI-enabled trial recruitment and enrollment movement, improve patient retention, and expand access to precision cancer care and cost-saving strategies at a larger and technology-enabled scale,” added Loaiza-Bonilla.

This partnership envisions to anticipate and satisfy the needs of pharma and CRO partners, research sites, clinical teams, and eligible patients in real time, using digital tools to accelerate cancer research, providing additional patient-centered services in oncology, and catalyzing the expansion of specialty pharmacy and Massive Bio’s capabilities as a new patient-centered AI-enabled standard model in oncology research.

About Massive Bio

Massive Bio’s mission is to provide access to clinical trials for every cancer patient regardless of his/her location and/or financial stability. Massive Bio is an AI-driven platform connecting cancer patients and their oncologists to bio-pharmaceutical clinical trials, yielding profound improvement in access and match rates, leading to faster drug development timelines, and creating a novel oncology data ecosystem for improved protocol design and real-world insights. Massive Bio controls the patient enrollment value chain starting with patient identification, following with AI-based virtual pre-screening outside the site, and resolving last mile issues for clinical trial enrollment. While improving cancer patients lives, Massive Bio serves over two dozen pharmaceutical companies, contract research organizations (CROs) and hospital networks. In addition, Massive Bio has been awarded an SBIR contract by the National Cancer Institute (NCI) to develop and characterize its Deep Learning Clinical Trial Matching System (DLCTMS), Contract No. 75N91020C00016. Selected to the “Digital Health 100” by New York City Health Business Leaders, Massive Bio provides oncology dedicated patient recruitment, site selection, real-world data services, and AI-based trial prescreening services to its enterprise customers. Massive Bio was founded in 2015, is headquartered in NYC, and is privately funded by strategic and financial investors. Follow Massive Bio on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook.

About Amber Specialty Pharmacy

Amber Specialty Pharmacy, a Hy-Vee, Inc. subsidiary, is a pioneer and leader in the specialty pharmacy industry with more than 23 years of experience providing specialized care for persons with chronic, complex medical conditions. Amber Specialty Pharmacy has built an exceptional reputation by providing personalized support and quality clinical care to patients and families. This comprehensive care approach supports the medical, emotional, financial, and administrative needs of patients throughout the United States. Amber Specialty Pharmacy is accredited by the Utilization Review Accreditation Commission (URAC) and the Accreditation Commission for Health Care (ACHC). The Amber Specialty Pharmacy headquarters is located in Omaha, Nebraska, with an additional 20 locations throughout the United States and Puerto Rico. Amber Specialty Pharmacy was named the 2020 Specialty Pharmacy of the Year by the National Association of Specialty Pharmacy. For more information about Amber Specialty Pharmacy’s services, call (888) 370-1724, email [email protected], or visit www.amberpharmacy.com.